But 2 regular and 1 elite Stormtrooper group, along with say a regular heavy Stormtrooper group would be okay, right? Yes. With Twin Shadows, you add 1 Regular and 1 Elite Heavy Stormtrooper (but no more, even if you own multiple copies of Twin Shadows) to your deck to pull from as open groups, or as part of initial or reserve groups as the mission dictates. So wait. Given that, if I get the hired guns, can I include then at all? Am I limited to only one deployment if I have two expansions?

Wait there's an ignore function?

Wave 9 Ewok Gliders confirmed!

It's called "targeting coordinator" and has been out since the Tantive ;-) Btw, has anyone noticed that automated protocols let's you both reinforce and recover in the same turn? Put it on a Tantive, target lock with fore section, automated protocols lets you reinforce, then recover with the aft section. This actually would make a true C&C Tantive viable by allowing it to essentially turtle when taking fire.

Oh wow, if you could equip all 3 mods...man, huge ships would be ... wow. I might have to try that one day just to see how amazingly op it is. Always reinforce, always have +2 energy, always have access to ordinance. You'd never have to allow down firing your guns at max power, while still having homing missiles if anything gets close, and still have energy and actions leftover for other things, like targeting coordinator or Toryn Farr. Your ship could literally do it all.

Requiring target locks to fire and having worse range limitations than most Hardpoint upgrades seem like disadvantages to me. Don't forget the other mods that are also awesome. Seriously two free energy every round is game changing. Besides, I've never seen an epic match last me then a few rounds of shooting. I'm pretty sure that a military vessel would be equipped with dozens if not hundreds of rounds of munitions (fighters at least once we start talking the scale of the raider), and since you only fire one per round, you can just figure the ship has "enough rounds to last this fight"

So I realized that we will likely be getting huge ships for both residence and first order factions.

So I was going to say that won't work but then I realized it totally will. If you're already using the ordnance mod, that would be cheap little something to add to make sure that when you want something dead it will die. Note that you don't even need to spend the focus *and* The huge ship gets a focus, so you can fire with a target lock on the same ship twice in one turn. And if you have weapons engineer you can then get another target lock.So say you have a guy at range 5 you really want dead? You fire primaries at him, spend the target lock and then use the tracers on some close by ready to hit target, get a target lock on that guy, get *another* target lock on your real target and hammer him with a TL'd turbo laser. Tough to pull off, sure but deadly? You bet.

every time I try to get out, they pull me back in... This dramatically changes epic. The biggest trouble for huge ships has always been energy and action economy. 1. Energy : you never have enough and the corvette and raider especially have more hard points than you can fire effectively so have to assume that after the first turn you won't be firing on full cylinders. Plus you can't afford any other cards that need energy (such as Toryn Farr) because all your energy is tied up in your weapons. They address this problem in two ways: optimized generators just flat out gives you more energy (which very versatile), while ordnance tubes give you weapon that doesn't require energy. The case where you would choose one over the other is not always going to be easy. Both also still function if you are crippled but in that case ordinance would be better add you don't need the energy and crippled ships can usually only have 1 energy, wasting the second from the generators. 2. Action economy : the best things you can do with your huge ship requires actions, but you also always want to reinforce or recover, or you're just a very large, very extensive debris field. Automated protocols solves this nicely by letting you take the action you want and still get the action you need. Better, it allows you to still perform a recover or reinforce after the section with that command has been crippled. Honestly I think the automated protocols are better suited to the single section ships than the two section. I will probably make my default corvette build now involve a homing missile launcher in the fore section and ordnance experts. I'd never use more than one munition though, as you can only use ordnance experts once per round. Proton torpedoes are a good match with this as you can expect 2 hits, a focus and a blank on a four dice attack, and with the focus modification from the torpedo and blank modification from the ordinance experts, you stand a very good chance of getting 4 hits. I love this stuff!

So they can hurt themselves? You can't mass stun with blast. Yeah it's a shame the y don't have reach so blast wouldn't hit then or something ;-) You're still only dealing 1 damage. Again, conditions don't apply to people hit by blast. I don't know why you think Royal Guards would be specifically good with bombardment when they're actually one of the worst considering that means General Sorin would be near the rebels. Who said anything about it being objectively good? Just awesome ny friend. A thoroughly munchkin-ish idea that's just something to think about.

So they can hurt themselves? You can't mass stun with blast. Yeah it's a shame the y don't have reach so blast wouldn't hit then or something ;-)

Just want to point out something that people have over looked: royal guards with blast.

I for one like what they are doing with updating the ships. They don't take the easy way out and just do a points reduction in an errata, they try to find interesting and creative solutions to make each ship unique. I think only reason they did a points reduction for the a wing is because that was the best way to support the low ps blocker role. Yeah you have to buy something new but it gives us more interesting and varied options each time. I think people get really unrealistic ideas of how quick updates should be put out. I'd rather it take a few years to get the fix (as with the advanced) and it be interesting and fun than just a quick and dirty point change that comes out in an faq online. (Mind you, I say this as someone who is likely to never get a raider). Thank you to the design team of x wing for making a fun game and taking the time to make fun and thematic updates to the ships that are lacking. Edit: also just want to point out that it is a testament to how good the game is that so many people who can't bring themselves to do anything but complain still play it and keep up on the latest updates.

In general, but there were a lot of times I would have rather spent the surge to get extra damage and killed an enemy, or maybe stunned an enemy. It's the lack of versatility that hurts.

I saw a preview with xwings! Oh...it's The rpg

"You've earned it lieutenant Jackson. And on a personal note, thank you for performing at the officers club last night. The boys have been talking about nothing but that moon walk of yours all day."

I bet that is one thing a lot of people will miss. You get to roll their dice, without using ANY surge abilities. (Except recover 1 strain.) Suddenly using a Royal Guard's/Imperial Officer/Probe Droids weapon just got a lot less exciting. Great point. Biv’s melee attack of C&P (hero version/no class card upgrades) has taught us that attack dice without being able to spend surges can be pretty underwhelming. Yeah this basically my experience with biv. The attachment is nice but I think next time I'd just spring for the surge abilities first.

If xwing has taught me anything, it's that unless something is way underpowered, there's *always* someone complaining about power creep.

I'm really disappointed in MHD's model. MHD is a hard working medical droid that's very accomplished, yet look: the figure is clearly sexualized what with having no clothes, being practically anorexic, and even a full on thigh gap. :-D No but seriously, each of these is unique and really cool. Being able to spend surge to heal others is pretty cool. I like the stimulants with verra. Actually verra is very cool. You have to make interesting tactical choices about who to use her ability on, as it is expensive enough That you wouldn't want to waste it on just anyone, plus the idea of her picking up the head of an AT-ST to fire at enemies is pretty funny.

I seriously considered making a "condolences for disappointed mu0n" thread this morning

Man, I don't. I was pretty jazzed about the Dracula expansion, but i don't know about this new mars expansion. The ships really don't fit the star wars feel.

I think we are going to hear more about that Dracula expansion they've been talking up lately. Haven't seen the ships yet. And I have no idea how the new rules will work with the existing system, but FFG is pretty good about game play stuff, it's probably just the articles are rubbish again.

Yeah I get that it's part of the clear < Orange < green < clear meta, but still is fat Orange base wing any better than fat clear base wing? No it's not. Just more stale talentless flying.

If you play Saska, don't get gadgeteer as your first ability. It's tempting to be sure but the problem is, if that's *all* you have, the device tokens won't be terribly useful. Get toolkit first, maybe something else, but tool kit is so insanely useful, it is a required first skill - remember you can use it for any attribute test, including things like fenn's adrenaline rush (I used this + gideon's rallying shout and badly abused the recover strain -> recover health mechanic to give Fenn insane health regen). Biv's shake it off + survival gear is a good combo I really wish I had thought of because he badly needs some strain recovery early on (the blue + red dice of his starting gun are useless for that so once he's maxed out, short of resting, he's done.)

Just had a thought: what do you guys think about, in a campaign, taking a squad of elite storm troopers, giving them 501st attachment and just using them to harass the rebels ahh mission with hit and run attacks. As long as they always move and use the special action from the attachment, they have an effective speed of 6, allowing then to keep their distance, and if they get hurt just run away and heal, then come back with a focus. Obviously you'd need to screen then with other units, but I think that, since right, you could do some serious hurt.